Fissures that cut through the Earth's crust where the Sichuan Basin collides with the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau could still give rise to a future seismic shock, according to Mike Ellis of the British Geological Survey.

"These faults remain active," said Ellis, co-author of the 2007 study that appeared in the journal Tectonics.

"There should be a no-building zone that envelopes the length of the active faults," Ellis told National Geographic News.

"Schools and hospitals should not be built within a critical distance of the faults, nor should any high-density population building be placed in a landslide hazard zone."

Buffer Zone

Alex Densmore of the Institute of Hazard and Risk Research at Durham University, who also co-authored the 2007 study, agreed that a buffer zone should border these faults, which stretch for about 150 miles (250 kilometers).

"If you put a building across a fault, it is literally going to be split in half," Ellis said.

The idea is not new: A buffer zone was created after the San Fernando earthquake in California in the 1970s, he said.

In China countless homes and schools constructed of unreinforced brick or concrete crumbled like sand castles during the quake, which killed about 70,000 people.